Leaving Rehab

 

I'm celebrating discharge from rehab one month ago today.  (The picture was probably taken on Christmas Day, I remember wearing the red shirt and pajama pants.)  

A month ago today was my first full day of being allowed to get out of bed without supervision.  Without that belt that the helpers put around me.  To go to the bathroom without using the call button was so, so awesome.

I was eager to leave and was happy to pack away my clothes and miscellaneous items by myself.  My daughters came, the nurse with the wheel chair came, and then I was in the car.  I thought I knew where the facility was located, but as we drove away I realized it wasn't exactly where I thought it was.  

We drove down I-71, exited to 471, stopped at Graeter's for ice cream for the family Christmas gathering planned for that afternoon.  Then up the steps to my house - I think I was carried up the steps more than walked up them.

And there was my chair, my Christmas tree, a refrigerator full of things I could choose whenever I felt like it.  Soon there were my precious grandchildren and son-in-law.  I couldn't even be sad that I had to go to bed before the end of the gathering.

Maybe later we'll celebrate the accomplishments of the past month.

Dreaming

 

The January days are gray.

Enough said.

Off the Tree

Yes, I'm that person.  I love the Hallmark ornaments on my tree, and I enjoy the process of putting them back in their boxes at the end of the season.

Some are special and most were selected at after Christmas sales.  I have one my mother gave me, and she has been gone for many years.  Some "dad" ornaments purchased when my husband was still living. One given by a dear friend for my help during her baby daughter's hospitalization - that little daughter is now grown with children of her own.  Some have been gifts.

I take them off the tree one at a time and find the matching boxes.  Of course there are always a few boxes without ornaments (still somewhere on the tree) and a few ornaments without boxes that have been lost over the years.

The tree will stay up at least another week - I love the cheerful light during gray January days. 

Jigsaw

 

Thanks to my friend Diane for gifting me with a jigsaw puzzle (not this one, this is my second one) that I can enjoy.  My usual inclination is to shove the pieces back in the box, but this kind of puzzle with only 300 pieces and a defined picture I can get into.  There is another on the way from Amazon.

I do have to wonder, though, about the extra pink piece off to the right.  Is someone else going to be sad that their piece is missing?

Granddaughter Nora came yesterday and her mom picked up some Mexican carryout.  Nora helped me figure out how to do two elusive things on my recent email download.  How to get the links to open, and how to access the column on the left that takes me to deleted and sent emails, etc.  On my previous computer those things just automatically worked, this one requires an extra step.

I'm looking forward to football this afternoon.  Can the Detroit Lions get their miracle?

Laundry

 

I probably mentioned - I've been banished from the basement by my daughters because of the steep stairs.  

Because my washer and dryer are in the basement, my local daughter has been doing my laundry on Saturdays.  

But today the outside temperature is fifty degrees, and it isn't raining, so I decided to try the experiment I've been thinking about - going out the front door, down the steps to the street, then down my driveway into the basement.

My sheets are now in the washer and I fee like I've taken one more step toward independence.  

Having said that, I have been feeling little motivation for the past couple of days.  My pulse ox is giving good readings, my blood pressure is good, no real reason for this as far as I can tell.  I've read an entire book, worked on a new puzzle, cleaned my kitchen, and that's about it.  I'm hoping that this laundry experiment will help me move forward again.

Real Person

 

Yesterday I decided that I just needed to try getting out and driving my car.  The idea of driving was starting to feel a little daunting - what I call getting bigger in my head.  I told myself that I could just drive around the block if it didn't feel right.

And the driving was fine.  Despite not doing it for seven weeks it felt like yesterday.  I'll need to review some of the car's more obscure features, like the cruise control buttons, which I rarely use any way.

I went to the nursing home to visit my friend, to the Smoothie King drive through, to the library to pick up a book on hold.

In retrospect, just one of those things would probably have been enough.  I was tired by the time I got up the steps and back into my house.  That part was humbling.  

But the feeling of being like a real person again - that feels amazing.

Five Fish

 

This wasn't how I expected this day to go, but it went off in a good direction.

Last spring, a friend asked me to do a wall hanging for her daughter's Christmas gift, incorporating about twenty or more of her daughter's swim suits from synchronized swimming.  We all know that Christmas is past, but I hope she will grant me grace.

It took a long time to figure out how this might work.  The swim suits certainly weren't the cotton fabrics I usually use, and there were sequins and other trims involved.  You'll see later how the finished project evolved, but today we'll just look at this one fish.

I decided to cut the swim suits into fish shapes - even cutting up those suits took a little courage, plus I couldn't be sure that my plan would actually work.

Before I got sick, I had come as far as having the fish cut out and pinned haphazardly to the base.  My plan for today was to arrange those fish into a good arrangement.

But I realized that I really, really wanted to see if sewing them on the background would actually work.  In rehab, with this unfinished project on my mind, I'd ordered glue sticks (plus fabric paints) because I know that the slippery fish would shift if they weren't glued down.

So, I turned on my long-neglected quilter, glued down a fish, and stitched around the edges.  And did the same for four more fish.

It worked - and now one of my goals for the week is to get all those fish stabilized and sewn down.

It felt so good to actually be doing something creative.  Time just slowed down.

Easier Recipe

 

Yesterday's mention of reindeer chow had me thinking about this far simpler snack recipe from Food Network.  It can't compete with reindeer chow, but it's good.

Cinnamon Sugar Pretzels

Toss 4 cups small pretzels with 6 tablespoons melted butter and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.  Spread on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees until lightly roasted but not dry, about five minutes.  Transfer to a separate bowl and toss with 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon.

And that's it.  Easy enough to do when your oven is in use anyway.

For the past couple of days, I've combined my two exercise sessions into one session.  I'm much happier doing it this way and I don't mind getting that one session over with in the morning.  A week ago, I was too tired in the mornings for any exercise, so . . . progress.

Winter View

The view out my window these days.  I was trying for a picture of the cozy house up the street, with its pretty lights at dusk.

But this view is good enough, snow, finally, and with the cold it's staying for a while.  Icicles hanging from my steep roof.

Today was grocery pick-up day, and I have all kinds of good things to cook in the days ahead.  Plus, fourteen frozen meals frow my Medicare Advantage plan arrived, packed in dry ice, ready to go in the freezer.  I think that the people who crunch the numbers have determined that when people, who have been hospitalized for a time, are eating well they are less likely to be re-hospitalized.  It's all about the money.

And some lovely church friends are bringing lunches as well.  which means seeing their faces and having my soul fed as well.

I'm happy to be eating again like a normal person, not always so hungry like I was when I came home from rehab.  I'd eat meals and snacks and then wake up hungry at night, eating crackers before going back to sleep.

And reindeer chow - I saw a picture of that when I was in the hospital and it looked amazing.  My daughter made some when I got home and I ate so much of it those first days home.  I told myself that it was sort of healthy because it had peanut butter, nuts rice chex, but it also had lots of powdered sugar and M&M''s.

I'm actually considering making a Valentine version.

Movie Recommendation

I hope that those of you who enjoy Appalachian literature, or those of you who just like a movie with good acting and a great story, will enjoy The Starling Girl as much as I did. Set in Eastern Kentucky, with wonderful cinematography, it's worth watching twice.  You can find it on Prime.

We finally got some snow today, maybe an inch or two.  I'm inside (I'm always inside) making oatmeal bread, my favorite.  Usually I knead by hand, enjoying that process, but today I just put it in the mixer with the dough hook - I may never go back.  It was just so easy. 

I've had that mixer for twenty years and at first I did use it for kneading - that was one of the reasons why I got the big powerful one.  Then it required a repair and I wondered whether the dough feature had overloaded it and just used it for other things. Today, though, it was a champ.   

Exercises

 

Part of my life, for now.  And going forward.  And yes, there are more exercises on the back.

It feels like progress is so, so slow.  And yet, there is progress.  It's easier to stand from sitting in a chair than a week ago, easier to do the stair exercises.  I need to remember that I'm starting from a long period of inactivity.  And that maybe being 78 has something to do with it.

About a month prior to my hospitalization I had an outpatient  glaucoma surgery that required a reduction in activity for several weeks.  So, actually, I'm kind of working from that point.

It's a little concerning that I haven't had my eye doctor follow-ups from the surgery, but I'll just have to deal with that in a few weeks.  I did ask for an ophthalmology consult when I was in the hospital - the stent looked good and the pressure was good in both eyes and that relieved my anxiety eye-wise.

The RN following up from rehab visited this morning and lungs sound clear, everything else checked out ok.  Next week will be a virtual visit, another in-person visit with discharge in two weeks.

Pudding

 

In rehab, and after, swallowing and drinking were a chore.  Maybe it was a follow-up to the three days' intubation in the hospital (I have no memory of that.)  As a result, I ended up with a collection of packaged almond milk plus a few supplements.

Who knows why, maybe a fixation with sweets that has thankfully passed, I wanted to see if I could use an Orgain supplement to make a higher protein pudding.  It wasn't a grand success.  My pudding  has a few lumps, no one's fault but mine.  And the supplement was a tan color, which made for a tan pudding.

The consistency is great, taste is good with that butter and real vanilla extract.  I didn't account for the sweetness in the supplement, and the final result was too sweet - yes, I said that. 

Protein is about twice that of a pudding made with milk, so there's that.  But overall, I'm done with this experiment.  

Laptop

 

By the time I got to rehab I realized, in my still somewhat scrambled mind, that a new laptop would be important in my recovery.  For various reasons, the most important being downstairs computer access. And second, it was a delayed purchase anyway.

The first two rehab nights, when sleep was strange (Covid?) and night blended into day, I puzzled over what would be important in this purchase.  Lots of looking up laptops on Amazon.  Finally I pushed the button and ordered one.  Actually, I accidentally ordered two, but luckily Amazon returns aren't difficult.

Now I can happily sit with my laptop being - actually - in my lap.  In my living room.  In my bedroom.

Way up there for me is being able to journal in the mornings.  I took Julia Cameron's advice to write Morning Pages seriously, have done it for years.  (You can look up her book The Artist's Way.)  I've always liked the idea that my journaling disappears from sight, it feels more private somehow when the document is closed and out of sight.

But here's another thing - I can now stream Netflix and Prime on the laptop and start catching up on movies and shows that are all new to me.  Somehow seeing them in a smaller format, at closer range, is more attractive to me than watching on tv.  My evenings will be more interesting.

Brussels Sprouts Today

Yesterday I mentioned that my posts, for a while, may include lots of food related references.  And today, roasted Brussels sprouts.  Nothing special here, so easy to roast them in the oven, it's just a matter of wanting to do it.  And I did.

And so, looking back, on December 2 I had a nice morning, then decided to take a nap.  I woke up with a 103 degree fever and difficulty breathing.  My daughter called the ambulance (known around here as the squad) and they took me to University of Cincinnati Hospital, our hospital request.  I remember looking up at the structure as we went over the bridge into Cincinnati, remember being wheeled into the ER with lots of people looking at me.  After that, things got pretty vague for a long time.  We can pick up here again another day.

Yesterday my daughter Steph picked up my grocery and prescription order, brought me a smoothie from Smoothie King, and did my laundry.  My washer and dryer are in the basement, and I am banished from the basement because of the steep stairs.

I'd looked before, and there isn't a way to incorporate upstairs laundry into my compact Cape Cod.  Something to think about.  The expensive solution would be to add a room off the kitchen.  I've often dreamed of that room, although my dreams never included laundry behind closed cupboard doors. 

Starting Again

 It's been a long time, folks.  But having gone through a major health event over the past weeks, I realize I want to reclaim my life and blogging may be a part of that.  Plus it's a new year.

I imagine that my posts will ramble, touching on what's happened, documenting my progress, helping me ground myself in the present.

And so, we'll start here, with learning to put pictures on this new laptop, then getting them to you.

Yesterday I made fried apples.  I've always loved them, had never made them.  Being aware now of just how much butter and sugar goes into them, I may love them a little less, or not.  Making them was actually easy, and they are so good.

You will see, going forward, that food and cooking are a big deal for me right now.  We can talk more about that later.